Every Fear I Swallow Makes Me Whole
by Saber Alli
Summary: Picks up after BDM. The crew have been laying low for a few months and must now pick up the pieces and attempt to keep going.
1. Dark Things Moving Under Me

Summary: Picking up the pieces. Set after BDM.

Disclaimer: I dont own this great universe... (emos)

Quote: I'd challenge you to a battle of wits, but you appear to be unarmed.

Authors Note: This is my first try at fanfiction, be gentle. I'll try to update regularly, but I have a full time job and go to school so I make no promises.

Out in the black of space is a ship. On it are seven individuals who for a moment shook the galaxy. They have worked hard to stay under the radar these past few months, and now it seems the worlds are finally settling down into their normal places.

On the ship all are asleep, or rather should be. However three lay awake, one sits in an empty pilots chair and tries to keep from falling apart, the other is above her waiting for her to slip away so she can check the headings one last time, and the last walks the darken corridors wishing for sleep to still his thoughts.

Morning comes and in the kitchen Kaylee cheerfully whistles as she throws something together. Beside her preparing the coffee is Simon with a big grin on his face, as he watches her. Next to come in is Inara, she glances around the room looking for someone, with a pleasant smile on her face that never falters, though behind the mask she does for a moment.

"Well Kaylee, what are we having this fine morning?"

However Kaylee is interrupted before she can reply by a rough looking man still wiping the sleep from his eyes.

"Gorramit how long till I can get my grub?! A mans likely to waste away waiting on yall lovebirds to quit making moony eyes at each other."

"Now Jayne it aint gonna be but another minute, so just sit tight now."Kaylee replies cheerfully.

During this exchange Zoë slips in quietly, the lack of sleep just barely showing on her face. Behind her comes the captain who chooses to stand against the doorframe rather than sit down.

"Where might our pilot be? I got some news and I don't want to be telling it twice"

Jayne rises from the table and sticks his head out the door to yell, "Crazy! Get down here so Mal can tell us the next stupid ass thing we doin' and I can get some food!"

Inara rolls her eyes. "Eloquent as always Jayne"

A split second later River leaps into the room, making half of the people jump with her sudden appearance. She looks over everyone there and then with a quick nod of her head sits next to Simon.

"Well folks I'll make this quick. We got ourselves a job haulin' some cargo from one of the outer planets, inward."

They all kind of looked around at each other uneasily, but it was Zoë who spoke everyone's thoughts.

"How far inward are we talking sir?"

"Well…it's……inward, ya know?"

"Sir."

"Er…well, its lookingtobeaboutPersephone."

Silence reigns inside the room. "Did you say Persephone?" Inara asks.

Mal quickly nods his head and waits for the chaos to ensue, and boy he is not disappointed. He calmly waits for the shouting to go down, and after a few minutes he gets some silence. Zoë again is the first to summarize what they are all thinking.

"Are you insane, sir?"

Before he could answer that, Kaylee interrupted. "What she means is are ya sure it's safe?"

Jayne chimes in,"Screw that. I think what she means is for the Doc to recommend a good loony bin, ASAP."

Mal saw the Doc start to look him over critically and snaps, "I am not going crazy!"

"Have you been taking any kind of…. special medication?" Simon tentatively asks.

Mal fixes a steely glare upon the doctor who hunkers down and murmurs, "It's an honest question, sheesh."

"Now if the whining is through; this job is gonna be paying us a lot more than we're gonna get from our public service announcement and I don't think I need to be telling ya we need it bad."

Jayne is the first one to reply, "Hell if the moneys good, then I'm in."

The others look around at each other, but no one says a word. Mal takes note of that and says, "Good. Take us out River" as he walks out the door.

Inara quickly follows him out the door, but then almost runs into him turning towards her way.

"Mal, I…" Inara starts to say.

"I meant to ask..." he says at the same time.

They both laugh a little and she gestures for him to go first.

"I meant to ask if you would make some subtle inquiries as to the state of things concerning the state of things. I don't want to walk into anything."

"Of course Mal, are you worried for any specific reason?" she asks, pleased to be useful and thought of.

"Nah, just the situation is more complicated now and this is the soundest offer I could find."

"Okay well I will see what I can find" she replies with a charming smile.

Back in the kitchen Kaylee and Simon have walked off grinning their idiotic grins as River and Jayne engage in a staring contest.

Zoë watches them with amusement as Jayne finally breaks it off telling Crazy he had some guns to take care of. River flounces off with a smug look on her face pausing a second to tell Zoë to watch the jagged edges. Zoë nods back and River continues on her way. Zoë sits at the table a moment longer then pulls out her gun and begins to look it over as she returns to her bunk and her memories.

"It's gonna be a bumpy ride" River says to the dinosaurs on the bridge.


	2. Inconsequential Things Occur

Disclaimer: still don't own Firefly dammit. Quit bringing it up!

Quote: "Don't hate yourself in the morning. Sleep till noon."

Author's Note: Sorry this took so long. My only excuses would be August 12th was my one year anniversary and there's a tropical storm. I wanted to get into the meaty part of the story during this chapter, but then I didn't want to end on a cliffy. So you get to wait, say it with me "Yay."

Shout out to just slummin, JediJayne (what an extremely strange concept to think of, by the way) and Myth87 for the wonderful reviews!!

Chapter 2- Inconsequential Things Occur

Simon walks Kaylee to the entrance of the engine room and with a heated kiss reluctantly lets go and heads towards the medical bay. He steps inside to find Mal there waiting giving him an amused smile when he sees the Docs flushed face. Simon ignores the smile and calmly asks the captain his reason for being there.

"Well Doc, I want your opinion on my crew before we get neck-deep in this job"

"If you mean my sister…"

"I mean all of them" Mal interrupts.

"Okay, well River is a lot better. She still can't block out people very well, but Miranda is no longer torturing her mind, so her moods and thoughts are more stable." Simon slowly replied.

"So do you think she's up for it? That's the question." Mal said harshly.

Simon gave him a hard stare. "Up for what exactly? What do you know?!"

"I know nothing except what my gut is telling me." Mal replied as he started pacing.

"Then why do it? Do we really require the money, the job so bad? We were doing just fine, so why?"

Zoë stepped into the room silently to stand next to the captain, "Because we need to step back into the worlds. And the Captain wants us to do it on our terms, Simon. Not when we run out of supplies or are found out and forced that way."

"Fine" Simon said with resignation in his voice, "I'll make sure we are stocked up and have the crew checked out."

"Sir?" Zoë asked.

"Get Jayne and check out our supplies, also make sure the cargo hold is in order."

Zoë gave him a nod and walked out the door as quietly and briskly as she had come in.

"And what about her, Captain?" Simon asked pointedly.

"What? Does she have some illness I weren't aware of?"

"No, of course not, however-"

"Then it isn't your problem son." Mal stated as he turned to leave.

Simon let out an annoyed sigh, day dreaming for a minute of giving the Captain some illness, preferably one that caused the person to be mute as a side effect. He enjoyed the fantasy a little longer, even adding Jayne to it, before letting it go. As much as he liked to think about such things he knew it was something he would never do, so he quickly got to work, checking the stock in his medical bay.

They were all gather at the table eating dinner when Mal announced they were about a day out from their destination.

"So soon?" Kaylee asked.

"Soon is relative", River replied, and "we have approximately 1623 minutes and-"

"That's Okay River, I really don't want to know. Inara, a moment if you don't mind?"

"Certainly Mal, what did you need?"

"I just wanted to see if you came up with anything."

"I looked into it but found nothing" Inara replied slowly.

"Well what kind of nothing?" Mal asked.

"Excuse me?"

"What kind?! Geesh are my lips moving? Was it a too clean kind of nothing? Where everything looks perfect because idiots don't know how to do the nothing right. Or was it the more realistic nothing? Because that one is the kind you fall for and means your messing with some bad, bad people. Ya gotta check the nothing to make sure its real and not set up! So which was it?"

"….. you have issues." Inara stated as she rolled her eyes and walked by.

She walked by Zoë who took a long look at her and asked, "You been talking to the Captain?"

Inara gave a small annoyed smile. "How could you tell?"

"He just has a way with people" Zoë said as she continued to walk.

Up on the bridge Mal had just sat down in the pilot's chair, preparing to take over for a few hours and give River a break when Simon walked in.

"Have you thought….. of maybe doing more acts similar to Miranda?" he asked slowly.

"And hello to you too." Mal replied sarcastically "No, I haven't. I don't know about you but the costs were way too high, or had you forgotten?"

"No of course not! I didn't mean that… just something. Maybe I could speak with those who helped me break out River, ask them. I'm sure there are other horrors besides The Academy and Miranda."

"No." Mal replied flatly. "We are not in that business. We do that and the Alliance will focus all its power on us. No, I 'm not signing this crew up for that."

"But if we could help, Miranda made a huge difference! Maybe we can make a change in the government. You were in the war, surely you want something different." Simon said tentatively.

"There's not gonna be a war anytime soon. Any sign the Alliance would immediately crush not to mention finding recruits, getting supplies, and too many are not recovered from the last one. If we tried again now it would be a paltry attempt and easily crushed. Plus I don't know that a different government is better. It could very well be worse.

We are not even healed yet ourselves and I am not interested."

"I see you points, all of them, but it's just a thought" Simon said resignedly.

Up in the ducts River listens silently, her eyes closed. "You only get one life" she whispers softly "and event set in motion are beyond your control. So you better hold on" she says with a smile.


End file.
